Unlearning the Future
May 21 2008 / by juldrich
Category: Business & Work Year: General Rating: 6 Hot
By Jack Uldrich 
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
The future is unknowable. There are far too many variables for even the most foresighted individual or powerful supercomputer to accurately forecast what tomorrow – let alone next year or the next decade – will look like with precision. Nevertheless, this fact neither discounts the importance of forecasting, nor does it diminish the work that those individuals (myself included) try to do in discerning what the future might hold in store.
I would, however, like to submit that anyone inclined toward thinking about the future should be open to the idea of unlearning, which I define as “the unique skill of jettisoning old knowledge in order to accomodate newer and more relevant information.”
A case in point is this new study suggesting that global warming may not be worsening hurricanes. Now, before anyone gets too not and bothered by the real or perceived flaws in the study’s methodology, I’d like to make clear that it is not my contention that this study is the final word on the topic. Rather, I simply want to highlight it as an example of how continued advances in the development of better and more sophisticated supercomputers, algorithms and ubiqitous sensors are likely to lead to more situations in the future where scientists and researchers produce results that question and challenge conventional wisdom. (To this point, since Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans many people have come to believe that there is a direct connection between global climate change and the frequency and severity of hurricanes; and this belief, in turn, has lead them to predict that more hurricanes are in our future.) (cont.)
The job of forecasters and futurists, however, is to be receptive to contradictory information—especially when it challenges fundamental beliefs or assumptions about the future.
History is littered with examples of yesterday’s dogma being mocked and ridiculed by the next generation. There is no reason to think that many of our most cherished beliefs won’t be similarly mocked and ridiculed in the future.
One way to avoid this fate is to have the courage to “unlearn” things whenever new and compelling information becomes available.
Interested in other posts on the topic of unlearning? Check out these articles:
Does the Pharmaceutical Industry Need to Unlearn?
Is the Health Care Industry prepared to Unlearn?
Learning to Unlearn: Case Study #1
Examples of Unexponential Thinking
Comment Thread (1 Response)
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Great post. As we try to make sense of the future it’s essential to, as you say, reset our simulations when new data comes in. I think it’s also important to try to remain open to as many possibilities / futures and regularly cycle through them, adjusting the % likelihood for each. Obviously this gets very difficult the more futures we try to simulate and I suspect that the brain prefers a single more-or-less “settled” future simulation (similar to findings that humans, especially men, become aggravated when they are presented with too many behavioral options). This is why groups of humans (markets, social media) are better suited to computing a wide swathe of futures. While individual futurists must remain plastic, humans as a whole have the luxury of billions of simultaneous and variable simulations and regularly “recycle” perspective as noobs are introduced. :)
Posted by: Alvis Brigis May 21, 2008
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